


From the Chalice of Their Common Need

by the_rck



Series: Not Ready to Swallow Oblivion [4]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Conspiracy, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Resistance, Spies & Secret Agents, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-23 22:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14942267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Ron didn’t answer. He didn’t address the subject again for several hours, not until they were sitting down to eat dinner. “You wouldn’t be a general, Will,” he said as he spooned a mix of stir fried broccoli, carrots, and onions onto Will’s plate.“I’m fifteen,” Will replied. “I was never going to be. Maybe there’s something, someday, that I’m good enough at for being in charge, but it sure as hell won’t be because I can break walls.” He was almost certain that Ron wouldn’t have said as much as he had already unless he understood that about Will. “There’s a place for breaking walls, but I have to trust the people telling me to do it.” He’d have trusted his mother for that. He’d have trusted Mr Boy for that. It wouldn’t have been because of having or not having powers. It would have been because of knowing and not knowing consequences.





	1. Will: My Heart Is What It Was Before

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mari Evans's "Modern American Suite in Four Movements."
> 
> This goes back in time a good bit to show what Will has been up to.
> 
> Contains references to suspected past child sexual abuse (of Gwen by Stitches). Contains references to extraordinary levels of superhero and supervillain violence.
> 
> Thanks to Elizabeth_Culmer and Karios for beta assistance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Alms."

**August 2006**

When the footage became public, Will recognized Magenta before anyone else did. He was surprised by that. She looked different but not that different. He supposed that admitting that Magenta was standing behind Warren while he helped his father destroy the campus at Michigan Tech was simply too terrible. It meant either another betrayal, another person who had lied--

Or it meant something worse.

Will hadn’t been that great with people when he’d known Magenta, but he didn’t think she’d schemed with Gwen and Warren. She might have thrown herself on Warren’s mercy, knowing that Gwen had none, and gotten this, but…

Hope hurt like hell.

He admitted after an hour of arguing with himself that it didn’t mean his parents were alive. It had been ten months, and Magenta was the first person he’d seen who he could even think hadn’t been in on Gwen’s conspiracy to avenge her mother. He wasn’t the only one who cared about what had happened at Sky High; he was just the only person who also had had time to try to analyze all of the pieces.

He didn’t think that Gwen had taken so many trips from Sky High to the ground because she was moving corpses or even stealing equipment. She had prisoners. Somewhere. Will just couldn’t figure out where the hell she could stash that many people or how she had the resources to keep them.

He didn’t think that Gwen had brought them down to the surface just to murder them in more interesting ways. Gwen wasn’t that patient or subtle. If she’d been either, she’d have had six times as many allies, probably even some of the faculty.

She also wouldn’t have needed to steal whatever the hell that weapon had been in his parents’ lair. Then Will wouldn’t have forgotten Layla that night, and she wouldn’t have gone to Homecoming with Warren.

Will’d been sure that Warren was fine even before anybody saw him with his father. He’d thought that the fact that Barron Battle didn’t crush Gwen was evidence of that. Once he’d figured that part out, he’d started thinking about what sort of person could take someone on a date and then betray them.

Warren wasn’t Gwen. Warren had talked to Will in a mildly friendly way before Homecoming, and Will thought that Warren had found the four sidekicks amusing. How much of that had been a lie? Still, if Warren had protected Magenta, he might have protected other students. Layla, Zach, and Ethan might still be alive.

Will had shifted his attention, early in his forced vacation, from learning how to deal with all of the household things his mother once had-- cleaning, repairs, budgeting, cooking-- to learning psychology and computer programming and whatever he could about gathering and sorting information.

Ron was thrilled teach Will anything at all, knew a rather surprising number of odd things, and was completely willing to keep taking care of all of the household management. He hadn’t been a bus driver for Sky High because he couldn’t have found work elsewhere, and he’d had a lot of spare time on his hands when he wasn’t driving.

Will thought there might be more to it than that, but he didn’t ask because he didn’t want Ron to lie.

Ron was probably one of the few people in the world who would always be able to find Sky High. Nobody else had a beacon to tell them where it had gone. The knowledge just hadn’t mattered before Magenta. There wasn’t anything there for anybody, and there were too many other things to deal with.

Will thought that his window of waiting for someone else to tell him when to start fighting might be over. He was almost certain that, given another year, they’d be deploying him as a tank. All he really needed to do was stand in front of people who needed not to die and to charge forward when he was told. He’d been going on autopilot toward that, and now-- Now there was something else to consider.

Will didn’t want to be a tank or a wall or a missile. Well, not _just_ those things. There’d be times and places for being those. Sometimes, brute force was useful, and people seeing him act like his father would mean them assuming that he thought in straight lines and was, therefore, predictable. Magenta might guess he wasn’t, but Will didn’t think Gwen would or that Warren knew enough to.

Ron knew people who knew people who knew people. He not only knew where Sky High currently was but also that Barron Battle’s son was still there and was hiring. Once Ron understood that Will was trying to think sideways on the subject, he frowned and said, “I don’t think either of us can get hired.”

Will hadn’t thought about sending Ron. He was pretty sure that, if he did, Ron’s parents would find a way through Will’s invulnerability in order to eviscerate him. They’d probably let him live after, but Will wasn’t going to enjoy it.

“I hadn’t quite gotten to the point of thinking about sending anyone,” Will admitted. “I… I don’t think I’m ready to send anyone anywhere.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I think…” He hated to say it. “I can’t change anything for Magenta or… anyone else there… by throwing myself or you or one of your buddies at Warren.” He considered what he had to offer. He had money. He had safety and space.

A few people had asked about sending relatives to stay with him, but nobody had actually done it yet. Will hadn’t made any promises to anyone, so he didn’t have to hold rooms for them. They’d just assumed that he’d have space later on.

“Are there a lot of people like you, Ron?” Will asked. “Like I thought I was? People on the inside of the supers’ world but only just? Knowing all the secrets but not people that supers would think of as knowing?”

Ron gave Will a look that was much harder and more calculating than any expression Will had ever seen on the bus driver’s face before. “Like me or you? No. We’re too well known.” He smiled and spread his hands. “Wrong families, both of us. There are a lot of people… not quite like us. Ears to the ground and invisible. We don’t tell freshmen because some of them do what you did-- develop major powers and end up in every database in the world.”

Will thought about that and nodded. “The statistics are pretty terrible for active sidekicks.” He’d done a little number crunching after power placement. The tools his parents had used for tracking real estate related data had been perfectly happy to help him sort through other kinds of numbers. About a third of active sidekicks never had a chance to retire. No one kept track of how many retired with work related disabilities.

Will squared his shoulders. “I don’t want sidekicks,” he said. “I don’t think we win the war or lose it with powers. Mr Williams is a lot better at the whole thing than Gaia-- Mrs Williams-- is. I think this is supplies and information, misinformation and subtle sabotage.” He met Ron’s eyes. “I want to learn that part. I want to know what happened on Sky High, too, but I want to-- need to-- be able to do something with that after I find out.”

Will took a deep breath. “I can trade room and board, with all the protections here, for a few people to teach and a few people to learn. You know the size of the place and what we’ve got. I think we all need to know how to do as many things as possible, and I’m kind of terrible at learning just from books.” He had lists in his own head, lists of things he really needed to know.

“Your superhero allies will notice,” Ron said.

Will considered that, too. He suspected that Ron already had an answer. Will took a deep breath. “We’re more likely to get kids from active superheroes if I have--” He shook his head. “Right now, nobody’s here yet because unpowered spouses don’t want to leave the powered ones, and none of them are willing to let me-- or you-- look after their kids. We need to build a staff as if this was a boarding school. Anybody can come here to help out. Staff turnover is fine as long as everyone’s properly vetted.”

Ron didn’t answer. He didn’t address the subject again for several hours, not until they were sitting down to eat dinner. “You wouldn’t be a general, Will,” he said as he spooned a mix of stir fried broccoli, carrots, and onions onto Will’s plate.

“I’m fifteen,” Will replied. “I was never going to be. Maybe there’s something, someday, that I’m good enough at for being in charge, but it sure as hell won’t be because I can break walls.” He was almost certain that Ron wouldn’t have said as much as he had already unless he understood that about Will. “There’s a place for breaking walls, but I have to trust the people telling me to do it.” He’d have trusted his mother for that. He’d have trusted Mr Boy for that. It wouldn’t have been because of having or not having powers. It would have been because of knowing and not knowing consequences.

Whatever else Will might say or think about Mr Boy, he’d known consequences. Will had a terrible suspicion that a lot of those consequences came from things his parents had done-- or not done-- without thinking or caring. His mother might just have been young. His father… His father had never been hurt by anything, so it never occurred to him that other people-- real people-- might be. Save the Citizen wasn’t actually about real people.

Will’s father had been part of the problem; Will really, really didn’t want to be.

“And if we ask you to be a research subject?”

Will hadn’t expected that, but he realized immediately that he should have. “I’d trust _you_ for that, Ron.” Will shrugged. “I don’t know the people you trust.” Yet.

Ron nodded and looked just a little relieved.

So he had thought Will might still be that ignorant.

“Once bitten,” Will said softly. “The next one may not look like Gwen, but I’ll be watching for _acting_ like Gwen. Just being in my superpowered, Stronghold heir, fifteen year old presence doesn’t make real people happy, not automatically. If someone’s acting like the sun shines out of my ass, there’s a reason.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to know at fifteen.” Ron didn’t look sad, but he sounded sad.

Will shrugged. He wasn’t going to un-know it just because he was young. “I’m still going to work the superhero side of things. I just… I don’t think that’s the part that’s going to fix things.” He really hoped that Ron’s friends-- friends of friends of friends-- would accept Will’s good intentions on the basis of that.


	2. Ron: Their Stilled Voices Speaking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Ed Falco's “Morning Voices.”

**Early September 2006**

Will was a good kid. Ron had known that from the first moments on the bus. He’d also known that Ron Wilson, Bus Driver, shouldn’t notice that the kid was scared. Ron noticed anyway and wondered about it. When he gave Will his card, Ron was pretty certain Will would use it. Ron just didn’t think it would be for anything more than advice.

When Will came into powers, Ron was a little surprised and more than a bit sorry. He wouldn’t have minded having someone like Will to help him, not so much with the bus driving as with Wayside recruitment. There were too many cases where Ron didn’t dare extend a hand because he couldn’t test the response first. Having a partner would mean one could ask the leading questions while the other came by later with the real opportunity.

Will, like Ron, would have a good cover for staying in the world of supers and for being a bit weird about it all. Friendly and eager and just a bit bitter underneath. The Commander and Jetstream sure as hell weren’t going to let their only child be a sidekick. They weren’t that different from Ron’s parents.

By the time Homecoming rolled around, Ron was seriously considering Layla Williams as a recruit, but he hadn’t been convinced that he wanted to invite her father inside with her and wasn’t sure he could persuade her without that.

Homecoming had been a clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks, and Ron and Will would both have died if Will hadn’t discovered that he had his mother’s powers, too. The sheer bad timing of it happening the same night as the prison breakouts meant that no one was able to go and clean up the mess, either.

Will thought that Gwen transporting people after meant that they were alive. Ron had been betting on zombies or, more likely given Gwen’s talents, programmed cyborgs of some sort. Ron hadn’t thought that the current absence of evidence about what had happened necessarily supported Will’s hopes.

Except that, by the time they’d been at Will’s cabin three weeks, he was speaking of his parents in very definite past tense. He missed them. He mourned them. He knew they weren’t ever coming back.

Will’d been trying to do his part of the housework from the beginning, but three weeks in was when he really threw himself into learning. He asked Ron a lot of questions about the things Ron knew how to do, and Ron found Will, more than once, looking online for things Will thought Ron didn’t know how to do.

So Ron taught Will carpentry and wiring and a bit about drywall. He taught Will how to start a fire without matches or superpowers. He taught Will how to figure out where the mice were getting in and how to stop them. He taught Will how to balance a checkbook and how that generalized out to a household budget.

Over the winter, they focused on history and psychology then branched into economics. Ron showed Will how to try to understand a culture based on their surviving art and literature.

Will definitely noticed that those were not the areas of expertise of a man who had no options besides driving a school bus. He just didn’t comment.

Will worked on learning programming on his own. Ron was about four years behind on that and told Will that there wasn’t any point in Will learning stuff that really wouldn’t work any more.

Ron found out what had happened at Homecoming, what had happened inside the school during Homecoming, six weeks before Will saw his friend standing with Barron Battle. He didn’t tell Will because the kid couldn’t do anything to change things and because he was a little afraid that Will would rush off to try to rescue his friends.

Ron wasn’t sure if it was that Wayside hadn’t known before then or if Wayside hadn’t chosen to tell him because of where he was and with whom. Both were beyond possible. He’d been told to stay where he was and not to draw attention. Too many people knew his family.

Ron suspected that Wayside only told him because they knew that he’d find out eventually. It wasn’t something he needed to know in order to do what he was doing. It wasn’t something that affected him personally, not really. He’d known the kids and teachers, some of them pretty damned well, but so had a lot of other people who still hadn’t been told and weren’t going to be.

And the more time Wayside had before Royal Pain’s actual Evil Scheme came out, the more time they had to find out what she’d done with the babies. Ron’s expertise with kids started at about age thirteen, so he had no ideas about that. Hopefully someone else would. The entire population of Sky High hadn’t been at the dance, but Ron had checked the transportation records. About six hundred people had asked for transportation, and that count missed people like Will’s parents who could get there without help. 

Ron wouldn’t normally even have thought about recruiting a kid with powers like Will’s, but the world had changed. Wayside policies always talked about having a foot in each world and being at risk from both, but Will was still a good kid. He was also smart enough to understand that everything Ron was teaching him was useful.

The Commander would never have seen it.

Will got that part of dealing with a problem was seeing the angles so that there were fewer nasty surprises. Ron wasn’t teaching him what to do. Ron was teaching him how to figure out what to do. Even if Ron couldn’t recruit Will to join Wayside, he could make sure that Will knew things Sky High would never have taught him.

It helped that Will had an ethical core and that Gwen had happened to him so early. Not that Gwen was a good thing, just that she’d made Will realize that he wasn’t the center of the universe and that some people who were nice to him only wanted to use him. His parents and his friends were a hell of a high cost for that lesson, but that cost meant that it would stick.

*****

Ron met his Wayside contacts at a coffee shop in the nearest town while he was doing a supply run. Isabel and Pedro argued a lot less about whether or not to recruit Will than Ron had expected. Ron got the impression that they mainly wanted to be sure that Ron really trusted Will that much. 

“Things have changed,” Pedro said. “Soon, there aren’t going to be a lot of safe places to hide, so the cabin’s valuable as a way station, and if the supers aren’t grabbing Stronghold to teach him--

“Their loss. Our gain,” Isabel finished. “Will he--” She hesitated, and Ron realized that she was looking for a different word than ‘spy.’

“He’s looking for a way to be useful,” Ron said. “I don’t think he’ll betray anyone-- which kind of cuts both ways. He knows he’s going to have to be visible, so he’ll have friends, real friends, on that side. He just also… They’ve left him mostly alone with me. If I wasn’t there…” If Ron hadn’t been there, Will might still have been okay, but he also might have started looking for a way to die. “He’s fifteen.” Ron sighed. “Best case if he’d been alone? He’d have gone hunting Royal Pain.”

“About Royal Pain,” Pedro said. “We don’t think she tracked which baby was which. Battle’s son did, but… We think he deliberately mislabeled some of them. The eye colors are wrong.”

“It’s easier to tell who they’re not than who they are.” Isabel shrugged. “The decision from on high is to leave the ones on Sky High where they are because they’re safer there than the others are down here. Battle’s kid has hired professionals for the child care and even has been working on a barrier forcefield so that nobody can fall off the edge. As long as we leave them be, he’s not going to move them somewhere else.”

Ron looked down at his almost empty cup. He understood the logic. There was leeway of years for rescuing the kids Warren had taken, and it sounded like they were safe and healthy. “And the… others on Sky High?” The status of Will’s friends was going to be a sticking point for the boy, and Ron suspected that it might be the one big lie that Will would never forgive. “We have to tell Stronghold. If he finds out we knew and didn’t tell him--” Ron shook his head. “He’s not stupid. He already said there’s nothing he can do for Magenta, not for a long time yet. He knows that her being alive means some others might be, and he could get there. He just realizes that what he can do there might not help.”

Ron hadn’t decided yet what he’d tell Will if Wayside said to keep secrets. Ron wasn’t ready to break with Wayside, and he wasn’t ready to abandon Will.

Ron looked at Isabel. “Knowing that Jim Williams’ daughter is alive might not be a bad way to open communications with him. He’d be more likely to trust us that way.”

Isabel laughed. “He knows photos can be faked.”

Pedro shook his head. “No. Ron’s right. He might test for fakes, but he has to _want_ her to be alive.” He gave Ron a hard look. “But he can’t know that we know where Sky High is.”

“Tell him it moves,” Ron said. “It has, and Williams hasn’t ever been there or seen the schematics to know how hard-- or not-- it is to do.” Ron didn’t know himself, but he suspected it must be pretty easy. Possibly energy intensive and so difficult on that side, but the process of getting it to move must be idiotproof. “He might realize that it had to be mostly stationary for kids who could fly or had parents who could, so they could find it-- Jetstream didn’t have a beacon, after all-- but he also might not. His paranoia goes in directions that would make having the place move constantly seem like basic security.” He hesitated. “The kids who didn’t fly-- kids like his daughter and their friends-- couldn’t have found the location-- narrowed it down maybe, but not pinpointed. I’m not sure I could have found it without the beacon, and I drove the route for more than a dozen years.”

He looked at the other two to see if they believed him and judged them not quite sure. He shrugged. He couldn’t really prove it, not without either repairing his bus or pulling in someone who could fly. “I want to tell Will about the babies. I want to tell him about his other three friends, too. He doesn’t need to know the ins and outs of Wayside-- or even the name-- just that I trust the people passing things on.”

*****

After Ron told him, Will spent two hours trying to destroy gym equipment built to survive his father’s strength. After he emerged and showered, he sat down and started trying to build a model airplane from a kit. Will wasn’t particularly interested in airplanes or in model building, but Layla’s father had suggested it as something that would help him modulate his strength and aim for precision.

Will had destroyed crucial parts of the first six kits he tried just by misjudging how to free the pieces from their plastic bracketing. At this point, the real attraction of the kit was that he had to pay attention to what he was doing. The gym had let him rage. The kit was helping him move from that to rationality.

Ron watched and didn’t try to interact with Will. The kid needed to learn how to handle things that upset him. That this news was probably some of the worst he’d gotten in the last year, that it gave him unpleasant answers to questions that had been hanging over him all that time, made it a thing Will needed to find his own way of facing. Will was old enough to know that no adult could wave a magic wand and make everything right, but most adults never gave up hoping that someone else had that power, someone who’d appear and make everything work.

The real world didn’t do that, and Will was stuck with it. He’d never be anonymous enough to hide any more than Ron would, and he had powers to protect him, enough so that Will was sure to see vanishing into anonymity as letting other people down.

Ron served dinner seven hours after he’d finished telling Will about what had gone down at Sky High over the last year. Will hadn’t stopped to eat lunch, so Ron tried to make up for that by having more food available and by having it be things he knew Will liked.

After Will had demolished two full plates, he finally looked at Ron and said, “Their families need to know.”

Ron knew this was going to be a make or break moment. “Some of my friends are going to talk to Layla’s father, but I’d… I don’t want him connecting me to them.” Ethan’s parents might well already be Inside, but Ron didn’t know and hadn’t thought it was a thing he should ask. He’d been afraid that it would sound too much like blame for them having allowed Ethan to go to Sky High.

And it would have been blame. Ethan’s power could have been overlooked and wasn’t going to be dangerous to anyone if it stayed untrained. The kid should never have been there for Homecoming. Magenta hadn’t had anyone looking out for her, and Zach’s parents had been too close to being heroes. There’d never been the slightest chance that Layla wouldn’t end up at Sky High. Ethan, though…

Ethan hadn’t had to be there.

Losing your kid was a damned high price to pay for misjudgment, but it wasn’t actually a rare price in the world of supers.

Will narrowed his eyes. “That’s not just an old boys’ network.”

Ron refolded his napkin and put it on the table. “There are things I won’t tell you.” Which was a confirmation of sorts. “You’re not the only one who’s been bitten before.”

Will looked at the table. “I don’t want collateral damage.” He sighed. “How long did you spend deciding whether or not to tell me?” He still wasn’t looking at Ron.

“I needed to find out--” Ron hesitated. “I had to get permission. If I told you without that, it would mean losing the chance for more information.”

Will nodded. He picked at a snag in the tablecloth. “I know why I shouldn’t be, but I want to be in charge.” It wasn’t a demand or even a request, just a resigned statement of fact. “Can your people tell how…” He hesitated and took one deep breath after another. “Are the four of them still-- How much are they still the people I knew?”

Ron noted that Will wasn’t asking about his parents. Ron hadn’t quite expected that Will’d understand that, while the babies who’d been the Commander and Jetstream were his kin, they weren’t his parents in any way but a technical, genetic sense. “I don’t know,” Ron admitted.

Will still hadn’t raised his eyes. “Layla can grow a tree from seed to fruit in under thirty seconds, has been able to since we were ten. She refused to show her powers to Coach Boomer because of the inequities in the system. He assumed that that meant she didn’t have any.” 

Going by Will’s lack of inflection, Ron guessed that Will considered that revelation a betrayal of sorts. Ron wished he could offer reassurance that it wasn’t.

Will raised his eyes to meet Ron’s. “Warren has to know by now. If no one else knows-- Well, it would tell us something about Warren. We’re going to need that.”

Ron thought that Will’s eyes looked like ice, ice with a raging fire behind it. “Will--”

Will shook his head. “We know a hell of a lot about the older villains. We know damn all about Warren, less than we’ve even got on Gwen--” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then a little sick. “Gwen’s father is a weak point for her, beyond just that he’s her father, beyond that he’ll have left financial records and all that shit. If he wasn’t the sort to hold her obsessively in order to try to raise that baby to be who he always _wanted_ Sue Tenney to be, Gwen wouldn’t be Royal Pain. That’s not actually-- That’s not fatherly.” He hesitated. “I looked at their yearbooks, all four years, a lot the first couple of weeks after. Sue Tenney didn’t care about having her hair perfect or her clothes just so or--” He waved a hand. “That came from how Gwen grew up. We just need to figure out her father’s angles.”

Will wasn’t wrong, but Ron felt a little sick that this boy knew that much about horrors.

“Give me the names of the Sky High kids who’re known to be villains now.” Will’s right hand was squeezing the edge of the table. The only reason it didn’t splinter was that it had been designed to stand up to his father pounding on it. “I’ve at least met them, and they’ll be easier targets if we can pry them apart.” He looked at his hand. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to find out that Warren’s smarter than the others. More dangerous.”

Will sighed. “I could give someone enough to prove to Zach or Layla that they were bringing a message from me. I just… Without knowing where their heads are, I can’t guess if it would be a good idea. There’s nowhere for your… whatever they are… to run up there, not unless they can fly, and-- You don’t have anybody who can but me, right?”

Ron shook his head. “Not that I know of. Most kids find out they can in the sort of incidents that get press.”

Will gave Ron a sharp look but didn’t follow up on that. “I’m not sure I can offer as much for Ethan or Magenta. And… If Warren’s trusting Magenta to stand next to him while he fights, it’s because he _can_.”

Ron hesitated. “Warren trusts all four of them. They’re not locked in any longer, remember?” He hadn’t told Will about the shared sleeping quarters. He wasn’t sure he should.

Will pushed back his chair, stood, and turned his back on Ron. “Fuck Stockholm.” There was a weight of bitterness in the words. “So, where do your people want me to go to break things?”

They both knew it wouldn’t be Sky High. Ron relaxed a little as he realized that Will really wasn’t going to take off to search for the school. “We’re new at this, too, Will,” Ron told him. “We’re a hell of a lot better at forgery and hacking and all the witness protection program stuff. Some data mining and a hell of a lot of networking. I can find six doctors in less than hour’s drive who would treat super-related injuries without asking for names and then lose the records, but I’ve never--” He shook his head. “I’ve never fired a handgun. I don’t know martial arts or how to build a bomb. We don’t do that shit. We can’t afford the attention it brings.”

Will’s shoulders tightened, but he nodded. “Neither fish nor fowl. Borders and thresholds are dangerous places-- good luck to cross the right way but bad luck other ways.”

Which told Ron that Will did understand.

“We’re--” Will laughed. There was still bitterness in it. “We’re fucking liminal all around, aren’t we? New war. New approach to winning. New tools. Our goals aren’t new, but we’re not aiming so much for victory, are we?”

“Not so much,” Ron agreed. “Not the way the supers define it, anyway.”

“I sort of suspect that the way the supers define it is shitty.” Will turned to look at Ron. “I’ll never wear a cape, Ron, not and mean it anyway. You can tell your people that if you think they’ll understand. I can do damn all for my friends or for my parents, so I’ll trade what I can do for whatever you all can do that way.” He met and held Ron’s eyes. “You can have what I can do anyway because you’re not wrong, but…” His shoulders sagged a little. “That’s maybe a shitty bargaining position.”

Ron managed to laugh. It wasn’t very funny because Will wasn’t wrong on any of it, but Will had been hoping that it would be at least a little funny, and Ron could give him that much of what he wanted.


	3. Jim Williams: As Maps Remember Countries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Derek Walcott's "Eulogy to W.H. Auden."

**Early October 2006**

Jim and Debra talked twice, during the first few months after Homecoming, about having another child. Debra thought it might ease their grief. Jim thought it was too much like trying to replace Layla. They were both, he suspected, right. In the end, there simply wasn’t time for a baby, not if they were going to do the other things they both had to.

They ended up spending a lot of time apart. Jim thought that that had saved their marriage. Their approaches to grief were too different to let them support each other in ways that didn’t cut deeper than their loss did.

When Will called in September to tell Jim to look at the Michigan Tech footage from August, to pay attention to the people standing with Battle and his son, Jim seriously considered not telling Debra. Magenta being there didn’t mean Layla was alive. It might, in fact, mean Layla having been profoundly betrayed. 

Will didn’t think so; Jim heard suppressed excitement in his voice. “I was looking at the video again,” Will said, “trying to spot something useful, and-- Well, I almost didn’t recognize her, but one of them alive might mean--”

Jim didn’t really give Will’s speculations more than half an ear. He was too busy looking at the footage himself.

There wasn’t any more recent footage of Battle’s son to check, so Jim went to earlier footage and didn’t find Magenta anywhere before August’s obliteration of Michigan Tech. That, he was willing to accept as an encouraging sign. She hadn’t been in Battle’s retinue before, not even when his son had been.

Of course, the idea of Layla participating in destruction and murder left Jim with no appetite for several days, and that was why he did tell his wife. If she might have to face a living Layla in a fight, Debra needed warning. Layla knew Debra’s weaknesses. Layla _was_ one of Debra’s weaknesses.

They’d both cried, and they’d both gotten stinking drunk that night. The next morning, Jim worked on getting rid of almost all of the things that Layla might use to find them. The things she might reveal that could get them killed. He left the things he’d put in place before Homecoming that had been meant for Layla if she’d ever needed to flee on her own. Maybe she’d still have a use for those.

He wasn’t quite ready to give up that hope. He might never be.

A week later, Jim was in Argentina. Debra was in Australia somewhere. Jim didn’t know specifically because he didn’t need to, because, if he told someone, the best case was mission failure. Australia currently had a zero tolerance policy for foreign supers caught exercising powers within their borders. 

Debra had every intention of talking to whatever animals were willing. She was trying to locate a supervillain who had had two bases in the middle of that continent, each at different times. No one was sure exactly where either had been or if either was in condition to be reactivated. The animals would know, but Debra would have to find the right general area first.

Jim was staying at a hotel that catered to _norteamericanos_. He could read Spanish better than he spoke it, and he wanted a place where he could ask for directions without getting sneered at for mixing up verb tenses, accidentally using words that were profanity locally but not in the Mexican Spanish he’d been taught, or not remembering which way to go when someone said _’al derecho.’_

He’d had two meetings during the morning of his second day there, one in a church and one in a bar. He was still exhausted from traveling, and meeting people he wasn’t sure he could trust was always hard even when he was sure he wasn’t mixing up words, so he’d been looking forward to an early dinner and a soft bed.

Instead, he found a note pinned to his freshly pressed trousers. It was folded and looked very much like either a bill or some sort of sorry-we-scorched-your-cuffs note, but it wasn’t. It very much wasn’t. It was handwritten and in English.

_We have information about your daughter. We would like to share it as evidence of good will. There is a USB stick inside the spare roll of toilet paper. If you would like to meet, leave a thirteen centavo tip for the maid tomorrow morning._

Thirteen centavos was an insultingly small amount. Jim supposed that that was so that there was no chance he’d leave it as a genuine tip. He took the risk that the stick might be infected with something that would destroy his laptop because he needed to know and because, if he had to ditch the laptop, it wouldn’t be a great loss. He didn’t keep much on it when he traveled. What wasn’t there couldn’t be stolen.

He disabled every method his laptop had of connecting with anything else before he inserted the stick. There were four photographs of Layla. None of them were very good; angle, distance, lighting, and such factors implied covert photography rather than posed. Jim didn’t recognize the clothing she wore in any of them, and he was almost certain her hair was longer.

In one photograph, she sat on sunlit grass. Jim could tell that someone else was with her because their shadow fell on her from one side. The last photograph showed her standing with Warren Peace in what was probably the cafeteria at Sky High. Her expression told Jim that she was probably delivering an earnest lecture. She had one hand raised as if to poke Warren in the chest. He looked amused.

There were scars on her arms. Jim knew they were burn scars. Warren had tortured his baby. And these people, whoever they might be, had made sure to send Jim a picture that made the scars obvious.

Jim couldn’t murder Warren, not then, so he called the desk and requested an unopened bottle of the local rotgut. He didn’t cry until after his third drink.

The next morning, when he went out, he left two five centavo pieces and three one centavo pieces in the envelope for the maid. He also left a slip of paper with two words on it: _’aqui’_ and ‘here.’ One or the other would get the idea across.

He’d walk into Hell for more information, but he wouldn’t do it without at least trying to get them to talk on his ground. Not that the hotel room was even vaguely secure, not given that the maid was picking up his response. It was just the best Jim could do in a city where he didn’t trust anybody.

****

Jim wasn’t entirely surprised that the person who knocked on his door the next afternoon wore a maid’s uniform. She looked entirely unremarkable and probably at least fifteen years older than Jim was. Her hair was gray and pinned back in a bun, and she was only about five feet tall. No one noticed maids. No one noticed women, especially plain, older women.

“May I come in?” Her English was heavily accented but otherwise clear. The accent didn’t sound at all as if her native language were Spanish, but the brown of her skin matched that of many of the people Jim had seen on the street since he’d arrived in Buenos Aires.

She could disappear rapidly and completely if she had to, if Jim turned out to be a threat and if she survived discovering that he was.

Jim approved. He stepped back to let her through the door.

She came inside and waited a few feet inside until he had closed the door. “Will you feel better if I sit?”

“I’ll be all right either way.” He didn’t miss that he was closer to the door now than she was. He doubted it was accidental.

She nodded. “We thought about sending someone younger, but… It was suggested that you might prefer someone who wouldn’t be mistaken for a prostitute.”

Jim blinked. “I don’t think my wife would jump to that conclusion.” He studied his visitor for a moment. “We’d both be very interested in anyone who might try to blackmail me.” That might actually be a trap worth laying at some point. He shook his head. “My daughter,” he said.

Layla was the point of all of this.

“Alive and at Sky High. We’re not in a position to help her escape, and…” The woman shrugged. “We have the impression she wouldn’t go without all of the others. Her three friends and twenty four babies.”

Jim nodded then did a double take. “Babies?” He supposed that it made sense that they wouldn’t sacrifice a spy-- who else could have taken those pictures? --to rescue one girl. He probably wouldn’t do it for someone else’s daughter.

The woman turned her back on Jim and walked to the window. “Some sort of weapon to make people babies again. No memories remain as far as we can tell. Battle’s boy kept some of them. Royal Pain-- Gwen Grayson-- took the rest. We’re looking for diaper and formula purchases and for anyone hiring multiple nannies. We’re only eight months behind, so it’s still possible. Assuming nobody got an attack of some sort of common sense.”

Or, Jim thought with a chill, an attack of homicidal rage. His mother’s first advice on raising a baby had been, “You’ll want to kill it. Don’t.” He’d expected to pass that wisdom along at some point.

“Battle’s boy isn’t stupid, but he’s getting less careful about his prisoners. They’re not less careful about him.” The woman sighed. “No one seems to realize your girl has powers.”

Jim wondered what it meant that this woman knew. That information had never been shared widely. “I don’t think that would let her escape,” he said. “If she had powers, I mean.”

The woman turned back and smiled at Jim with just a hint of approval. “She’d always be Gaia’s daughter even without. Still too close to the inner circles of Hell.”

Jim took a moment to place the reference then said, “Even the ninth circle would be too close.”

“There are more circles than nine.”

Jim sat on his bed because his legs were starting to tremble. “If you want the chair, feel free.” 

The woman also sat. She didn’t say anything.

He considered his options for a few minutes. “What is it that you want from me?” He saw no reason to pretend that there might be nothing.

“We’d normally avoid you,” she said. “You’re not born to it, so we don’t expect you to see it. Your…” She hesitated. “Your publicly expressed views on risks and likely futures are…”

“I’m paranoid.” He’d heard that whispered too many times. Sometimes, they didn’t bother to whisper it.

“Aimed at a different survival strategy than ours. You were-- are-- right about the scope of the disaster.” She gave a one armed shrug. “Is it paranoia if it actually happens?”

“I thought Homecoming would be safe,” he said. “I wasn’t right about that.”

“No,” she admitted, “but we didn’t see that coming either.” She folded her hands in her lap. “We have…” She shook her head. “No, we _potentially_ have a worldwide network for gathering and relaying information. We don’t have any safe connections to your wife’s people, not for that. For Christmas cards and family reunions, sometimes, but…” She looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Our purpose has always been helping each other hide so that our children won’t be devoured. That is coming now, whatever we do, so we--” She shook her head.

So they were reaching out. Jim supposed he should have guessed that some people too close to the world of superheroes and supervillains would help each other find safety. “This must be terrifying.” The only reason he didn’t find it so was that he’d expected it to happen, not the particulars, just the general disaster.

And he and Debra had already lost what they’d most wanted to protect.

“I have no children,” the woman said. “Dying is still dying, but at least I don’t have to worry about that.” She met his eyes. “We will get you information when we have it. You will find a way to share it that doesn’t endanger our people or our purpose.”

“I won’t endanger your people or your purpose,” Jim said. “The rest… depends on the quality of the information.”

They shared a room service meal and two rounds of drinks before she told him her name was Frieda. She never told him her family name. He never asked.


	4. Ethan: The Anchor in the Garden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Martin Espada's “Black Islands.”

Ethan was almost certain that none of the others realized he was a spy. His friends wouldn’t have cared much, but they might not have been able to keep it from Warren, and Warren would care a great deal because he’d see it as betrayal.

Because it was.

Whatever Warren did in response would have nothing at all to do with playing for the audience. Knowing that Warren probably couldn’t kill him was considerably less comfort than it might have been because Ethan had a pretty good idea, now, of how much not dying could still hurt.

Sometimes, Ethan wondered what the hell he was doing because he wasn’t providing anything that was particularly useful. Sky High was a backwater, and even what Ethan had on Barron Battle wasn’t much. Barron Battle was too much like a natural disaster.

Ethan supposed that information on the people around Barron Battle was useful. A lot of young wannabes followed him, and the ones that survived to go independent were all going to be trouble. The ones that survived and stayed with Battle, those were going to belong to Warren some day. Ethan labeled the files on them as ‘potential personnel’ and shared them with Warren and the other three sidekicks.

He just left backdoors so that whoever Wayside currently had on the island could access the data, too.

Ethan’s pet project was creating a history of everything going back to Homecoming. It was a hobby. He interviewed people. He took photographs. He wrote everything down. He made videos. He kept a multimedia diary.

It was harmless because Ethan was a geeky scholar. History wasn’t dangerous. It was just a record that someone would look at decades later and chuckle over.

There were backdoors into all of those files, too. It was beyond amazing what questions people would answer honestly because Ethan looked harmless, earnest and nerdy. He’d grown some and likely still would more, but he’d had to accept that he wasn’t ever going to have muscles. If he’d started healing later in life, he might have, but his healing wouldn’t let micro-tears turn into bigger, stronger muscles.

He supposed that was a tradeoff for having fixed his eyes and his teeth, and he was tougher than he’d been before Homecoming because his body wouldn’t give out on him.

Ethan was always going to look like a weed that hadn’t gotten enough sunlight, and he kind of resented it, but he’d use that if it was a thing that worked. The other four all thought he was hot as he was, so it probably didn’t really matter.

****

The Wayside agent had approached Ethan in late July, the summer after Homecoming. Ethan had been spending a lot of time in the library, trying to figure out what the place had and didn’t have. The online catalogue had gone when Principal Powers deleted the student and faculty records. Ethan was using Amazon and LibraryThing for some books. He had the impression that he really needed the professional side of OCLC, though, because the library had a number of odd things that weren’t commercially available.

And, really, Ethan was going to have to learn how to catalogue properly.

Warren letting Ethan talk to librarians on professional forums had been a huge concession. Warren letting Ethan stay in the library without guards had been nearly as big, but the forums were online. Warren might not be able to plug all the leaks if Ethan said something he shouldn’t.

Their compromise was a woman named Violet Tan who watched what Ethan did online and helped him track his fake identities so that they remained consistent. She also made sure that those identities had the supporting electronic footprint necessary to make them not obvious fakes.

Ethan had three different socks for different angles of asking questions. He’d started out with just one, someone working for a charity and trying to determine best practices for rebuilding school library collections destroyed by disasters.

The problem with that came when people started sending him private queries about how to apply for grants since the form on his foundation’s fake website kept crashing. That was the point when Ethan discovered that Ms Tan had... overdone things just a bit.

Apparently, she’d been bored, so Ethan had her set up more socks for him and told her to figure out how to fund a foundation. Legally by preference. He was pretty sure he’d go to the illegal options in the end. He supposed that laundering that money would keep Ms Tan busy.

Ethan thought that she was going to be useful, long term. He didn’t so much mind a spy who was useful, too.

Ethan had had to work at persuading Warren that it would be a pity to have such a thorough cover story and not _use_ it. Going at it directly hadn’t worked, so he’d gone to Magenta and said he needed permission from Warren to get and spend money for his fake foundation. “It’ll cover my lies,” he told her. “I’m going to need this identity more than once.”

“He wasn’t happy about you using it once.” Magenta sounded kind of amused.

Ethan didn’t think it was funny. “Unless he wants me to go down there and get the damned degree so that I know what I’m doing--”

“Right.” Magenta laughed. Then she looked serious. “Warren’s doing some research of his own. He found some time lapse footage of plant roots and rock. Apparently the school’s foundations were heavily damaged some time before Homecoming.”

Ethan knew that only sounded like a non-sequitur. He also knew that the threat of Layla’s power was a sledgehammer when they needed tweezers. It wasn’t that Layla couldn’t take Warren. It was that she couldn’t-- yet-- do it without mutual assured destruction. “Tell him Layla’s into rebuilding schools?” Ethan was only half joking. If Warren went for that, it would give them a different sort of lever later on.

“I think it might be enough that you are,” Magenta said. “It’s just money, and I can spin it as a good thing that you’re wanting a plausible cover rather than trying to pass information. Just don’t ask to go to ALA.”

Ethan’s surprised look as Magenta turned away was mostly down to her having actually heard of ALA.

Ethan’s second sock wasn’t meant to last. He posed as a high school student trying to learn cataloguing basics in order to catalogue the collection for a nature center that did a lot of camps and classes. They couldn’t, he said, afford an actual librarian, and they had a lot of stuff that wasn’t books but still needed tracking.

That led him to the AACR2R. A lot of people told him it wasn’t ideal for what he wanted but that the something better was still years from being ready.

Ethan could deal with that. He just didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. He assigned Ms Tan to learn MARC formatting and to figure out authority records.

Ethan kept the second sock because so many people were encouraging him to get a library degree. They were happy to give him recommendations about things that would be useful underpinnings for that.

His third sock was the most threadbare because it hadn’t quite connected. He’d been looking for more information about library playgroup activities for toddlers. The problem was that ideas of best practices changed depending on the latest fads in child psychology. The flame wars were impressive and taught Ethan a lot about the ways that erudition could eviscerate.

He’d seen it happen before, had it directed at him before, so he’d known it was a thing. He just hadn’t actually seen it demonstrated so thoroughly or in ways that couldn’t be obscured by his own pain and assumptions. 

This was a thing he was going to have to learn how to do and to do well. That would be easier if he only watched, so that sock became a lurker. When Ethan was ready to try out the techniques, he’d do it elsewhere, probably 4chan. He just wasn’t ready to wade into that yet.

The recommendations he got about playgroups and story times were also aimed at groups with an adult for every child or two, groups where the kids didn’t know each other all that well and ranged across two or three years in age. He got a lot about serving multicultural communities which also involved flame wars and also didn’t exactly apply but did make Ethan worry about the kids growing up so culturally homogeneous that they couldn’t cope with people not like them.

Apart from passing a recommendation to Warren that the kids have some caretakers who didn’t speak English to them, Ethan wasn’t sure what they could do about it in the short term. He was afraid it was the sort of problem that was going to keep getting put off until it bit them all in the ass, years down the road.

Ethan tried hard to make the library useful for Sky High’s adult population, too. He set up a paperback swap shelf and started it off with a bunch of best sellers. He looked into ESL and online training resources. Prying approval out of Warren for the latter two things hadn’t been anything like as difficult as Ethan had feared. Money was an issue, of course, but Warren approved in principle.

Some of the old guard of thugs never visited the library, but most of Zach’s newer hires did. Sky High didn’t offer all that many options for entertainment, and Ethan had started getting DVDs and board games. Warren hadn’t understood the need for those and had refused to authorize any sort of purchases in that direction for almost three weeks.

Then Magenta told Warren that he was an asshole and that bored troops tended to pick fights and break shit which would cost a hell of a lot more than some games.

Ethan had been saying exactly the same things. Warren simply hadn’t listened until Magenta repeated it. Apparently Warren was using Magenta as a filter of some sort. That would have been smart except that, if one of the others asked, Magenta would have told Warren that it was critically important to find funds for gourmet kibble for every rat in the New York City subways.

Warren would probably realize that request was ridiculous, but Magenta would argue for it.

*****

**9 July 2006**

Ethan was pretty sure that the man who approached him about Wayside wasn’t the organization’s only agent on Sky High. Paul du Bois had only been on the island for two weeks when he first broached the subject to Ethan. Paul had been hired to help build greenhouses on what used to be the school’s football field.

It was temporary employment that might turn into something more permanent but that also could have ended with Paul as one of several anonymous corpses in a pit somewhere groundside. Paul had to have known that because villains ran 50-50 on killing all inconvenient witnesses. There were always more people desperate enough for work that the next big construction project could find eager applicants.

A 50% chance of feeding your kids was better than no chance at all.

Warren wasn’t that sort of villain because even Magenta objected on moral grounds. “So they know Sky High exists? Big fucking deal. Unless you’re giving them coordinates for finding us, that’s no secret at all. And, oh, hey, we need food cooked and floors mopped and things repaired. Just like every other place on any planet ever.” She’d met Warren’s eyes with all diamond at her core, promising painful death if he stepped outside what she was willing to tolerate.

Magenta could handle Warren killing. She just wasn’t going to let him do it for stupid-ass reasons. They could all have died from her drawing that line, but she was the only one who could, and, if Warren had gone that way, they’d all have died from it anyway. Eventually.

But Paul couldn’t possibly have known about Magenta saying that. The words had been private, and Sky High and Warren hadn’t let anyone leave permanently yet. Paul was young enough-- or looked young enough-- that he pretty certainly wasn’t worried about feeding his own kids. Younger siblings maybe, but Ethan was betting that Paul had no dependents, nobody to be left abandoned if Paul didn’t ever come home.

Paul probably had parents, though, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins. Ethan hoped that Paul had given his parents an extra tight hug after he got home. Paul should because Ethan couldn’t. Because Layla couldn’t. Because Zach couldn’t. Because neither Magenta not Warren were ever going to want to.

Ethan had been vaguely aware of Paul for a week before the first time the man spoke to him. A lot of Warren’s employees watched Warren’s sidekicks, so that part wasn’t unusual. It was just that Ethan spent a lot of time sitting at a desk, so most people didn’t watch him long. Ethan had assumed-- had been supposed to assume-- that Paul was watching him because they were both black. 

How Warren treated Ethan, how everyone else treated Ethan, might give Paul a heads up about where the dangers were. Anyone who gave Ethan shit was going to be a real danger for a construction worker without any claim on Warren’s favor.

So Ethan recognized Paul when the man sat down beside him one evening. Ethan was at one of the tables in the library, looking over a stack of antiquated computer science books, trying to decide if any of them still deserved shelf space as historical artifacts or as potential how-to guides if civilization suddenly went kablooey and someone had to build computers from scratch based entirely on Sky High’s library. 

Maybe they didn’t need shelf space? Ethan was trying to figure out how hard it would be to talk Warren into investing in microfilm or microfiche when Paul took the chair next to him and said, “I want to show you a picture of my girl.”

Ethan’s posture and facial expression must have shown that he was startled by the sudden proximity and taken aback by the familiarity implied by the words.

“You won’t regret it,” Paul promised. “She’s the prettiest ever, and I don’t deserve her.”

Ethan stared at Paul for a moment then turned his eyes to the photograph the man held. It showed Paul with his arm around Ethan’s older sister’s shoulders. Trish was smiling and making an ‘OK’ sign with her right hand. They were standing in front of a ‘playing now’ poster for a recent movie, something not even out on DVD yet.

Ethan knew because it was on his list of buy immediately DVDs. A lot of people wanted to see it. The first showing would be in the girls’ locker room with an audience of four. Possibly five if they were all happy with Warren right then. Probably five because it was an easy way to make Warren feel like they wanted him around.

That was when Ethan realized that Paul had judged his approach very carefully. No one else could hear them, and no one had been looking at Ethan when Paul sat down. Paul’d probably been waiting for the right moment for days. 

Ethan made his expression as serene and politely interested as he could. He really hoped that the man wasn’t about to threaten Trish.

“She said that wouldn’t be enough,” Paul said softly, “so she said to ask you if you still eat your peas with a knife.” He didn’t look as if he recognized the allusion. “I’m Paul,” he went on. “Paul du Bois.”

Ethan’s shoulders relaxed a little. For two years, ages four to six, he had used honey to make his green peas stick to a butter knife because the nursery rhyme said that was how it was done. He’d have stopped after a week or two because it tasted weird and got his hands sticky, but Trish had given him shit about it non-stop, and even at four, Ethan wasn’t going to let his big sister bully him into changing how he did things.

It really wasn’t the sort of thing that either Ethan or Trish would ever share casually, and Ethan was pretty sure that a man who had forced or tricked the information from his sister would have mentioned the honey. He probably also would have looked it up to find out where it came from.

“I think you need to burn that.” Ethan didn’t take his eyes off of the photograph. He wanted to keep it. He wanted that very badly. He also knew that, if Warren saw it, Paul wouldn’t die easy. Ethan wouldn’t die; he’d just want to. He made himself glance sideways at the other man.

Paul didn’t look like he misunderstood the risks he was taking. “Yeah,” he said. “She misses you. They all do. Knowing that you’re alive only helps a little.” The photo disappeared into Paul’s wallet again.

“There are cannons to the right of us, cannons to the left,” Ethan said very quietly. “I’m not charging past any of them for you.” He probably would for Trish or for their parents, but he wasn’t giving this stranger that, not without being forced.

“Doing that would be a hell of waste.” Paul hesitated. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything, but she said you wouldn’t go for that, that you wouldn’t take risks just for the hell of it or just for her.”

Better all around if this stranger believed that. It meant that he wouldn’t think he’d get far just by threatening Trish. Ethan just wished he could be sure his sister didn’t believe it. He wished he could tell her different.

But she might also have been trying to protect Ethan when she said that part about not taking risks. It depended on what she thought Paul was going to demand.

Ethan had figured out, during his months of imprisonment, that his fights with his sister were just proximity and them considering different things important due to the difference in their ages. He’d had worse fights with Zach during the last two weeks than he’d ever had with Trish, and he and Zach would walk through Hell for each other. 

His parents… He could see now that they’d been hoping that he’d give up on Sky High. He didn’t think they’d guessed that the school itself was dangerous; they could have kept him from going to Homecoming and hadn’t.

He really should have understood that it meant something that his mother and father had come together to sit him down and talk about going to Sky High versus Copeland High and all of the pros and cons of each. He’d just been so focused on being like Grandpa Frank that he hadn’t noticed.

Ethan closed his eyes. “Are all of them okay?”

“The last I knew. Nobody seems to be looking for them specifically.”

“Except you.”

Paul shrugged. “Your parents don’t want to talk to us. They know that they screwed up, but they’re both happier blaming us. Wearing a seatbelt only helps sometimes. It’s just that you don’t get that sometimes boost if you don’t bother fastening the damned thing while the car’s doing eighty.”

Ethan wasn’t sure exactly what Paul meant about the seatbelt. It was obviously a metaphor for something. “You’re going to have to explain more.”

“Being a sidekick sucks worse than not having powers,” Paul said, “but seeing your unpowered kids pushed into sidekick programs that’ll get them killed-- You any good with statistics? I can show you, but you’ll believe it more if you find the numbers and analyze them yourself. There are laws on the books about who has to be trained. They’re selectively enforced in most places, but it’s still safer to… stop being the person who’s supposed to fall into that category.

“We’re the people who, if you’d realized Sky High wasn’t for you, would have helped you disappear. Death certificate. New name. New past. New school. Possibly a scholarship if you wanted to do something that would help the rest of us later on.” Paul paused and took a deep breath. “It all depends on no one looking for us, though. Right now, no one’s _looking_ , but…” He made a tossing away gesture. “It doesn’t help to be hidden when the bombs are being tossed more or less randomly.”

Ethan thought he understood the seatbelt metaphor now. Homecoming had been a car wreck of epic proportions. Ethan might not have physical scars, but he hadn’t gotten out unscathed.

Ethan considered the rest of what Paul had just said. Ethan had been paying attention to groundside news. Barron Battle was the only part of what was happening that was truly random. Ethan suspected that what Paul meant was that this was World War III as opposed to just a lot of ‘regional conflicts’ that his people could get out of the way of with a witness protection program.

“You went to a lot of trouble to get here.” Ethan tipped his head back to look at the ceiling because he wanted a moment to put all of his might bes away.. “Risked a lot just talking to me. I’m not real clear on how Warren feels about us having friends.” He straightened and looked Paul in the eyes. “You’d better be damned sure what you think you can get is worth what you might pay.”

Offhand, Ethan couldn’t think of anything that Paul could get from him that Paul couldn’t get just from wandering around Sky High and keeping his eyes open.

Paul swallowed. “It might not be. We don’t know.” He closed his eyes. “Trish said she was pretty sure you wouldn’t turn me in.”

Setting a trap like this for Ethan would undermine several things Warren wanted, so Warren wouldn’t set this up. 

Barron Battle showed every sign of wanting Warren happy. Persuading Ethan to betray Warren like this wouldn’t serve that end.

And, if Sylvia Peace really wanted Ethan to betray Warren, all she had to do was visit Sky High. Finding Trish and working sideways was a thing she could have done, but it would be a hell of a lot of trouble. Warren’s mother didn’t like making that sort of effort.

Ethan was almost certain that no one else on the Battle side of the equation knew enough about Ethan and his family to be able to find Trish which meant that Paul’s people had to be connected to someone who’d known Ethan before Homecoming. That didn’t mean Paul’s people were who he said they were or that they had good intentions, but the list of real possibilities for informants was small.

Most of the people on the list had been at Homecoming, so really it was Ethan’s family, or it was Will. Ethan trusted his family. He also still trusted Will, even if Will had had his head up his ass about Gwen Grayson.

Ethan sighed. “You don’t think I can do something for you now. You think I can do something for you later.”

Paul smiled at him. “People survive by keeping options open.”

People also survived by giving things up. Ethan was pretty sure that Paul du Bois knew that already, so Ethan didn’t bother mentioning it.

And being a spy for Wayside made Ethan feel a lot better about the things he’d given up.

*****

Nobody worried much about Ethan, but that was fine. He knew who he was, who they were, and how they were all going to get by. He’d had years of practice at not letting anything show. Being angry or frightened or anything but quietly under his own control, all of that added to the risks of being a spy.

He didn’t need sharp edges or earth shattering power to make a difference. What he did might not change anything, but it also might. Not trying was a surer road to damnation than any other Ethan could see.

But Ethan never gave Wayside any information at all about Layla. He didn’t trust Wayside-- or anybody who hadn’t spent months in the girls’ locker room-- anything like that much.

Either everyone would know Layla without Ethan’s words, or they’d never realize what she’d refused to do. If she turned away from power-- Well, Ethan loved her enough to her to let her choose it. The world would keep spinning anyway.

And Layla would never be a thing that ordinary people needed to hide from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of me wanted this story and, more specifically, this chapter to be the end of the series because it shifts the focus to show that Sky High is actually only part of the picture and that maybe there's hope in the broader world. Then, I realized that this story, as a whole, needs to come before the fifth story, "Who Have Waited for Water."
> 
> I expected that Ethan would be working with Will somehow. I didn't expect Wayside until I started trying to make Ron Wilson explicable, but I think I should have. Wayside means that Ethan probably doesn't know he's working with Will. Will may or may not know about Ethan. It would depend on what Will does with his opportunities.


End file.
